petition.

But vexatious as all this certainly was, these people were greatly to be
pitied. As regarded intelligent horticulture they were altogether in the
dark. They took no agricultural papers, and books on gardening were
equally unknown upon their table,--the entire literature of the
household consisting of the penny newspaper, with piles of sensation
novels which the daughters had accumulated. How, from such a dearth of
reading suitable to their vocation, could they be expected to be better
informed than they were? or, with the peculiar caustic temper that ran
through the family, to make friends who might be instructive companions?
In agricultural knowledge I was really their superior, having an
exhaustless fund of information in the miscellaneous collection I had
picked up at the grocer's, of the diversified contents of which there
had never been a more painstaking student. By reference to such a
source, they would have learned how absurd was their selfish idea that
it was possible for me, or even a hundred like me, to overdo the
business of raising strawberries, no matter where established, but
especially when the fruit was consumed on the very spot where it was
produced. I know that this apprehension of producing too much fruit is a
mistake of many persons about embarking in the business. But further
knowledge invariably corrects it; there is never an over-supply. If, at
the beginning of my inquiries, the fear crossed my own mind, it was
dissipated by a single conversation with the widow in the market-house.

The horticulturist of this progressive age must not rest satisfied with
what he learns on his own ground. There is a vast outside world, full of
busy, intelligent minds, not content with things as they find them, but
searching, investigating, experimenting, and so successfully, that the
horticultural art is largely indebted to them for the amazing progress
it has of late years made toward perfection. These great unfolders of
some of Nature's profoundest secrets do not hide their lights under a
bushel. There is a perpetual interchange among them, by pen, by tongue,
and through the press, of the experiences and discoveries of each, the
common repositories of all which are the agricultural journals. There
collected as in a reservoir, they become fountains of instruction, not
only to the pioneer in horticulture, but even to the veteran, and those
who refuse to drink thereat will ever continue in the rear of a g